Finding the River: An Environmental History of the Elwha

Chapter 1: Strong River, Strong People: The Early History of the Elwha River and the Lower Elwha Klallam Indians

5 Chapter 1 Strong River, Strong People THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE ELWHA RIVER AND THE LOWER ELWHA KLALLAM INDIANS Give me a shovel and I’ll take that dam down myself. Jim Crane1 The Elwha River is located on the northern edge of the Olympic Peninsula, on the southern shore of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, nestled under the shadows and dark forests of the Olympic Mountains. On this far northwestern corner of the continental United States, storms roll in off the Pacific drenching the range’s western side, depositing lesser amounts of rain on the eastern edge and in the rainshadow on the northeast slope. The geologically young Olympic Mountains dominating the peninsula originate from the action of plate tectonics. The collision of the oceanic Juan de Fuca plate against the North American continental plate produces an uplift. This created the Olympic Mountains and still forces the mountains skyward. Thick with river-borne sediments layered on top of a platform of basalt, the Juan de Fuca plate is denser and heavier than—and therefore forced under—the continental plate. Throughout this process the edge of the continental plate scrapes off river-deposited sediments from the top of the Juan de Fuca plate and these sedimentary rocks pile up against the leading edge of the continent to form the Olympic Mountains.2 Glacial and river erosion produced the jagged profile of the Olympics, the series of steep peaks and precipitous ridges that constitute the range. Unlike the Cascades, where drainages generally Finding the River: An Environmental History of the Elwha 6 flow either east or west, the rivers of the Olympics all flow outward from the center, forming a radial pattern running north, east, south, and west. An abundance of rivers carrying the heavy rains or snowmelt dumped on these mountains by Pacific storms cut deep valleys throughout the Olympics. Over time, salmon migrated into and filled these rivers and their tributaries.3 Where these rivers cut through basalt they formed narrow gorges; where they cut through sedimentary rock they created wide meandering paths with gravel bars covered by alder. Both of these types of riverbeds are present on the Elwha River. The erosional process continues today; the cutting action of the rivers and their tributaries carry the soil of the Olympics to the sea, even as the movement of the tectonic plates still pushes the mountains ever skyward; uplift and erosion is the continual process of this dynamic range and continues as it has for hundreds of thousands of years. One key element of this natural cycle was interrupted for almost a century; salmon and steelhead no longer followed the Elwha River back into the heart of the mountains. While rivers have played an important role in sculpting the geography of the Olympics, glaciation, too, has worked significant changes on the mountain landscape. During a series of ice ages, beginning in the Pleistocene Epoch approximately 2 million years ago and ending about 12,000 years ago, the Olympics were covered by alpine glaciers and surrounded by the Cordilleran ice sheet. The massive glacier extended south from Canada to what is now the southern end of Puget Sound in the vicinity of Olympia. Glaciers are slow-moving rivers of ice forced into movement downhill from the accumulated weight of snow. As they grind downhill they greatly erode the landscape, cutting U-shaped valleys and scraping away rock and soil along the sides and bottom of the glacier. Glaciation during the Pleistocene era resulted in more than the carving of rock, however. The southern extension of the Cordilleran ice sheet blocked the migration of numerous species such as mountain goats, coyotes, wolverine, lynx, pica, porcupines, and grizzly bears from the mainland onto the peninsula. In the 20th century, mountain goats were introduced into the Olympic Mountains. Coyotes and Chapter 1: Strong River, Strong People 7 porcupines have also made their way to the peninsula, and flourished in the predator void created by the extermination of wolves when the peninsula was settled. In some cases, what many might think of as natural to the Olympic Peninsula actually reflects human manipulation and interference.4 The Elwha penetrates the Olympics farther than most rivers in this range and originates from deep in the heart of the mountains— approximately in the middle of the Olympics, where the Bailey Range, the Mount Olympus Range, and the Elwha Basin Range come together. From...